Inchworm
ANN KELLEY is a photographer and prize-winning poet who once nearly played cricket for Cornwall. She has previously published collections of photographs and poems, an audio book of cat stories, and some children’s fiction, including the award-winning Gussie series. She lives with her second husband and several cats on the edge of a cliff in Cornwall where they have survived a flood, a landslip, a lightning strike and the roof blowing off. She runs courses for aspiring poets at her home, writing courses for medics and medical students, and speaks about her poetry therapy work with patients at medical conferences.
The Bower Bird
is the sequel to
The Burying Beetle
was shorlisted for the Brandford Boase Award and was selected for the WHSmith New Talent Initiative.
The Bower Bird
won the 2007 Costa Children's Award and the UK literacy Association Book Award.
The Bower Bird
also won the 2008 Cornish Literary Guild's Literary Salver.
Other Books in the Gussie Series
Other Books by Ann Kelley, published by Luath Press
There are not many books around that you can give to anyone of any age and be sure of an appreciative audience, but Kelley does it beautifully in this, the third in the Gussie series, following the well-deserved Costa Category award for The Bower Bird.
Sue Baker, PUBLISHING NEWS
From the first line of this book I was captivated! Gussie is a fantastic heroine – innocent, brave and optimistic at all times. She seems so fragile, a kind soul you can’t help but root for, someone who doesn’t want to be pitied. Never before has a book caused me such appreciation of being healthy and alive. It was engrossing and poetic – it grabs you and won’t let go. There is lots of hidden humour, small clever things that Gussie says that at first you might not notice, but if you read it again, it will give you the giggles… This is definitely one of my top ten books. You have to read it, and it will stay with you forever!
TEEN TITLES
Overall, a great book, I certainly wouldn’t mind finding it in my stocking this Christmas.
THE INDEPENDENT
… mature, beautifully written
. THE IRISH WORLD
She succeeds in underlining the fragility of life but more importantly in celebrating the miraculous beauty of the world around us.
INIS
It’s a lovely book – lyrical, funny, full of wisdom. Gussie is such a dear – such a delight and a wonderful character, bright and sharp and strong, never to be pitied for an instant
. HELEN DUNMORE
An inspirational tale of youthful spirit in the face of adversity…What makes this book intriguing and brilliant is Gussie’s vitality and high spirits
. CORNWALL TODAY
The author as artist evokes people and places with delicacy, humour and truth – a novel of outstanding beauty
. THE 2007 COSTA BOOK AWARDS
Many thanks for sending The Burying Beetle. I started reading it this morning before breakfast and ignored hunger pangs to finish it off in great sadness. It’s quite beautifully done
. Sue Baker, PUBLISHING NEWS
This is a special book, the one you come across in a hundred, the one you will read and reread, a slow, savouring, enjoyable novel
. Marion Whybrow, ST IVES TIMES & ECHO
Acutely observed, tender, funny and very moving.
Michael Foreman
I am going to get this book no matter what. I will have this book.
Stephen Perkin, age 14
Obvious comparisons to Mark Haddon…
Sue Baker, PUBLISHING NEWS
Watch out for… Grown-ups rushing to borrow their children’s books (again) when The Burying Beetle by Ann Kelley is published.
THE HERALD MAGAZINE
…the same clear, direct perspective as Cassandra Mortmain in Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle – and she’s in a fairly similar situation too, living in the country with an eccentric parent.
PUBLISHING NEWS
There is a delightful joy in words, being alive, and in nature. The storyline is minimal, understated and secondary to the world of thoughts and the imagination. This is a rare and unusual novel.
Sophie Smiley, SCHOOL LIBRARIAN JOURNAL
ANN KELLEY
Luath
Press Limited
EDINBURGH
First published 2008
This edition 2009
eBook 2013
ISBN (print): 978-1-906817-12-1
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-909912-50-2
The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.
© Ann Kelley 2008
Many thanks to Bella, Simon, Sonny, Eiofe and Jake Hassett, Dr Kate Dalziel, Lisa Innes, Alan Naftalin, and Chloe Flora Foreman for inspiration, ideas and advice. And all friends and family who made suggestions and let me steal words out of their mouths.
To all organ donors and their families.
Thank you for the gift of hope.
PROLOGUE
The unexamined life is a life not worth living
–
SOCRATES
ALISTAIR SWERVES TO
miss a huge heap of something in the middle of the road. It’s
3
a.m
.
, the dead of night, the end of the year.
‘What the…?’
Mum stirs in the front passenger seat. ‘There’s another.’
‘What is it?’
‘Looks like elephant shit,’ I say.
Alistair winds down the window. Mum says, ‘Smells like elephant shit.’
Around the bend we come across them. Trunk to tail, the troupe tiptoe silently through the sleeping London street.
‘A circus?’
‘It’s lucky to see elephants,’ I say. I need all the luck I can get. I am on my way to have a heart and lung transplant.
Intensive Therapy Unit
MY FIRST THOUGHTS
on waking are – Where are my cats? I feel no pain but I do have tubes coming out of every orifice, plus one or two new holes in my chest and other places. My throat is sore and I can’t talk. Mummy is here wearing a hospital gown and surgical mask, though I can still see her tears, and Daddy looks anxiously through the glass door. He can’t come in because he has bugs up his nose.
It’s several days since the transplant. I am pretty drugged up and sleep a lot but everything went well, according to my cardiac surgeon. I have lots of nurses. Someone watches me all the time. It’s like having slaves. They turn me, wash me, change my dressings, take my temperature and blood pressure about a million times a day. There are machines all around me, monitoring all my bodily functions. I have catheters and bags of liquids going in and out of me, but I am now breathing without mechanical assistance. Various drugs are being fed into my veins. I feel sleepy but contented, not worried. The physiotherapist comes to make me cough. She calls me Gorgeous Gussie. She makes me laugh and it hurts.
Daddy strokes my hand. His nose germs have gone. There’s a canula taped onto the back of my hand. He keeps forgetting and knocking it. It stings. I glare at him and he apologises.
Thoughts flutter in my head and out again like a flock of pigeons rising from earth in a panicked bunch, like tickertape: loose sheets of paper snatched by the breeze.
Alistair cannot come into the Intensive Therapy unit, even though he’s a doctor, because he isn’t related. He waves through the window at me, blows kisses and gives the thumbs up sign.
I sleep and I am in a ball of pain. I am everyone who has lived, who is living now, who is going to live, and we are all in pain and this ball of pain is God. I am God. And the pain is everlasting. But with all my strength and power I force the pain into millions of parts, millions of people sharing the ball of pain, and I force the pain into a flat line of time – past, present and future. I am God, and God is everyone, and we all share the pain.
I open my eyes and see nurses, my invention, sharing my pain.
Was it a nightmare? It seems too real; I am still God, I am still in pain, but the pain is less, fading. There is a dreadful stench, like a dead elephant. I dare not close my eyes because I am terrified. It’s then that I remember, I’ve had this dream before. It is only a dream.
Room 3, B Ward
When I can talk again, I ask my nurse, Katy, if she is real. She laughs.
‘I was last time I looked,’ she says.
‘Is there a horrid smell?’
She sniffs. ‘No more than usual,’ She is doing something to my
IV
line. I suddenly start to cry.
‘Gussie, what is it, darling?’
‘I had a nasty dream. It was awful. And I…’
I’m afraid I blubber.
‘Nightmares are common after transplant, I’m afraid. Lots of people get them. You mustn’t worry, they’ll go away.’
I ask for a mirror. My chest is covered in a wide tape
,
so I can’t see the clips or incision but I want to see my face, to see if I’ve changed.
I have – I’m pink! Pink cheeks! Pink lips! Normal coloured. Not blue any more. I look normal. I don’t know whose heart and lungs I have inherited. It feels weird, very weird: not quite a robot but someone else’s heart and lungs working inside me, attached to my veins and arteries. Like putting a new engine in a clapped-out car. I was clapped-out, breathless all the time, fainting, and my heart racing like a steam train going through a tunnel. Chest pains, palpitations, nausea, dizziness, exhaustion, headaches, cyanosis, the usual stuff. I can’t wait to try out my new motor. Will I have the donor’s memories or habits? Perhaps I’ll start scratching my bum or tapping my foot. I could blame all my bad habits on my donor! Perhaps I will suddenly crave Brussels sprouts or black olives, perhaps I’ll be able to speak Russian or be mad on motor racing or Manchester United? If my donor was unhappy, will I have her bad memories? I hope she wasn’t allergic to cats; what a terrible thought. At pre-op meetings I was told that I wouldn’t acquire any of a donor’s traits. The heart is a pump and the lungs are bellows: they don’t carry memory. It’s a myth, they said. I won’t suddenly be an expert on quantum mechanics. Shame.
I don’t feel like a different person. My eyes look the same. It’s the same old Gussie staring out of them. Maybe I look a little older. I might start growing now, growing tits and hips and pubic hair. Getting taller. Putting on weight.
‘If I asked the doctors, do you think I could see my old heart and lungs, Mum?’
‘You gruesome little beast, no, I shouldn’t think so.’
‘Oh, why not?’ It would be fascinating to see my old organs, to see the disease I was born with. I hope they are going to keep them to show medical students.
‘Let’s concentrate on looking after the new organs, shall we?’ says one of the nurses, Katy, who has just done a blood test and is now is doing something to my
IV
lines.
